Janet Suzman Quotes

When doing theater, you have to find great satisfaction in the small things. There's going to be a repetition and a redundancy night after night, but it's the small variations in those moments - a word, a tone of voice, the smallest sense of enlightenment that can happen in an instant onstage - that will be the most rewarding.

I love acting and really taking on another person, another life.

I love theater work because of the immediate effect your performance has on the audience. And I love the repetition; I love getting on the same stage for more than a month and reciting the same lines, trying to make a small or large step towards an improvement in my acting.

In theater, you're playing characters. You believe you're somebody else, and you're acting.

You've got to love acting and that's true for me. I love the idea of getting on stage and getting in front of a camera.

People often argue about this. Obviously one of the skills in performance is acting, and you can't expect every Romeo to really be in love with their Juliet!

Performing, for me, has always been a very inner process.

Actors have to make you believe that it's happening for the first time and all that jazz and make it human and at the same time entertain you.

In theater, the wellspring of the character comes from the doing of it, like a trial by fire, but in front of an audience.

I love acting. It's an interesting challenge to make something that doesn't exist appear like it's happening, and to do it in a real way.

What made me fall in love with acting, which is my life, was watching other people perform. It made me hunger to do that.

I'm an actor in that I just want to create roles and characters and play parts that people remember and like or dislike or hate.

I think one of the great things about acting is the instant gratification: you just get up and start being a part of the story. The immediacy is something you get really addicted to.

The whole theatre world deeply attracts me. I love rehearsing and having time to make mistakes and laugh and discover things about yourself and other people - and the energy level is great.

I did think that acting would be much more like being a pop star. Now I'm here, I can't think of anything more different.

As actors, we often look for the scene, big moments that say, 'This is why you have to do this role.'

In theater acting, you leave that night and what it was is what it was.

As an actor, you create a character from your understanding of what you have heard and your observations. Eventually, every film is an extension of the images that I have seen or what I have heard or read somewhere.

As rewarding as a good film role can be, there is just nothing like getting up on a stage and taking an audience for a ride.

Film and stage are very different; I don't necessarily prefer one over the other. Every few years, I get a big itch to go back to the theater. To learn humility, to learn bravery and to remind yourself that the pistons that drive your craft are working on full power. And to remind yourself how badly paid actors can be.

I transitioned into theater and acting when I was about 9, community theater and musicals, being, like, chorus-kid-number-78 or whatever. But I just loved it. As a kid you just crave attention, and early on I just felt it was so cool and fun to play around and have people clap for me. But eventually I grew up and fell deeper into it.

I am so used to being up on stage and talking to my fans that it's strange to be on stage and be someone else. I can't look at the audience during 'In the Heights' or I will start talking to them.

I love acting. It's the one job I know of where you can go in, go through complete catharsis - emotionally, physically sometimes and mentally - and at the end of the day say, 'See you in the pub, guys.'

The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can't. You know, it's an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living.

I have learned that acting is not about beauty.